Me

by Elton John

That was just the mindset of the times: that happiness was somehow less important than keeping up appearances.

Even today, I still sometimes think that I’m trying to show my father what I’m made of, and he’s been dead since 1991.

Indeed, if you ever feel your life is getting a little routine, a bit humdrum, I can wholeheartedly recommend going on tour in the company of a hugely eccentric six-foot-seven gay blues singer with a drink problem. You’ll find things liven up quite considerably.

As everyone knows, fame, especially sudden fame, is a hollow, shallow and dangerous thing, its dark, seductive powers no substitute for true love or real friendship.

There’s times in my life when music has been an escape, the only thing that worked when everything else seemed broken, but at that moment I had nothing to escape from.

Over the years, I’ve had therapists tell me that it’s obsessive, addictive behaviour, or that I’m trying to buy people’s affection by giving them gifts. With the greatest of respect to the members of the psychiatric profession who have said that sort of thing to me, I think that’s a load of old shit. I’m not interested in buying people’s affection. I just get a lot of pleasure out of making people feel included or letting them know I’m thinking about them. I love seeing people’s faces when you treat them to something.

I’d become successful and popular, but I never felt cool.

I had been completely wrong when I thought that changing my name meant I’d changed as a person. I wasn’t Elton, I was Reg. And Reg was still the same as he’d been fifteen years ago, hiding in his bedroom while his parents fought: insecure and body-conscious and self-loathing. I didn’t want to go home to him at night.

If she wanted a row, Mum always knew which buttons to press, because she had installed the buttons in the first place.

it’s strange sometimes how fame affects the people around you more than it affects you.

There comes a point where you realize you’re just banging your head against a brick wall: no matter how many times you do it, you’re never going to break through, you’re just going to end up with a constant headache.

There was one week when I was literally in the studio with both Fall Out Boy and Engelbert Humperdinck. I went from playing with an emo punk band, doing a song with lyrics that were all ‘fuck you’ and ‘I’m here to scream’ – and came with a video that involved me getting covered in blood while people were stabbed and smashed in the face with crowbars – to singing ‘Something About The Way You Look Tonight’ with the guy who did ‘Release Me’. You can call that an advanced case of musical schizophrenia if you want, but I’m really proud of being a musician who can do both, of being the only thing those two artists have in common with each other.

I’d rather try and build a bridge to someone on the opposite side to me than put up a wall.

Reg Dwight might have been born in Pinner in 1947, but Elton John was born in the stalls of the Harrow Granada that night in October 1962.

There’s really no point in asking what if? The only question worth asking is: what’s next?